**EMBARGOED: NOT FOR PUBLICATION AND INTERNET BEFORE 18h00 GMT JANUARY 28, 2009**Photo released on January 28, 2009 shows computer-generated images charting the development of severe weather patterns on exoplanet HD 80606b. Astronomers have observed a planet some 200 light years from Earth that, for a few hours, becomes 700 degrees Celsius (1,300 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter every time its elliptical orbit brings it close to its sun. The scientists, in a study released on January 28, 2009 say they have generated the most realistic images ever captured of a planet outside our Solar System, also called an exoplanet. HD 80606b is located 190 light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major, and It can be seen with binoculars. AFP PHOTO / NASA / Spitzer Space Telescope (Photo credit should read HO/AFP/Getty Images)

UC Santa Cruz scientists have discovered a huge, hot, gassy planet that goes through wild temperature changes in a matter of hours as it makes its eccentric orbit around a distant star in the Great Bear constellation.

In only six hours, the planet's temperature leaps from 980 degrees Fahrenheitto more than 2,200 degrees - an orbital record for any of the more than 300 curious objects known as exoplanets that have been detected in exotic solar systems throughout the heavens.

"I'm blown away by this discovery," said Debra Fischer an exoplanet hunter at San Francisco State University who was not connected to the Santa Cruz research. "It's an incredible report. These guys have just won the exoplanet science lottery."

The planet is four times the mass of Jupiter and its eccentric orbit carries it around its sun in a little more than 111 days.

When it's closest and hottest, it is barely more than 300,000 miles away - not much more distant than our cold moon is from us. But when the planet is farthest away from its sun and coolest, it's nearly 70 million miles away. That would be like some object flying somewhere far out between the orbits of Earth and Venus, the UC Santa Cruz astronomers calculate.

The astronomers said they observed the planet's heated swings using the infrared eye of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

The planet is 190 light-years away from Earth, meaning the astronomers are actually watching a phenomenon that happened nearly two centuries ago.

"We're can see a huge storm brewing on the planet," said UC Santa Cruz astrophysicist Gregory Laughlin "It's amazing ... to think that we're feeling the heat from a storm that burst way out there when James Monroe was president here at home."

From Earth, the planet's sun in Ursa Major is visible through decent binoculars in the far northern sky at the base of the Big Dipper, Laughlin's team members said.

While the planet - known as HD 80606b - appears as only a spot, it shows through computer simulations as a thin blue crescent from reflected starlight when it's cool, but when it's hot, it glows a bright cherry red, according to two of Laughlin's Santa Cruz colleagues, Jonathan Langton and Daniel Kasen.

Since 1995, when giant planets orbiting distant stars were first discovered, scientists have sought to understand their violent atmospheres. But to do an experiment revealing the atmosphere's nature, San Francisco State's Fischer said, you'd have to take an entire planet and push it close to its star, then shove the planet behind the star and see what happens to its atmosphere as it disappears.

"This is exactly what nature did with HD 80606b - a gift from nature!" Fischer said.

The exoplanet hunters all hope to find some small rocky ones in habitable zones around their suns where life might be possible. But with its wild temperature swings and its heat that would instantly incinerate anything near it, HD 80606b is one planet that won't have any rocky ones in the vicinity, Laughlin said.